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Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism

June 24, 2014 / alex posted in dialectics, reviews, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What is “less than nothing” is what is lost in order to maintain the relationship between subject and object. This nothing sustains the dialectic, but it’s also the ground that is synthesized in Hegel’s dialectical project. But really, this nothing is also the “form” by which phenomenon is understood. That is to say, coming from Kant, understanding or the law of desire is the pure nothingness that imposes the order we see in the chaotic world.

It’s actually pretty simple. The universal, the a priori, is the emptiness that is lost in understanding the Real. This is because we can’t apprehend understanding directly; we can only see it through the empirical world. The closest we get to understanding itself, so to speak, is the petit object a, the pure signifier that is its own lack necessarily: without this particle of necessary being we wouldn’t be able to see being in the world at all. As Zizek says, for Heidigger, we wouldn’t have Sein without Das Sein.

Zizek goes to great lengths to demonstrate the post-structural condition: that how we read comes before what we read. Borrowing from Karen Barad, we can separate how we read from what we read, because we can use how we read to discover what we read — or we can use what we read to discover how we read – but we cannot discover their entanglement, that is the border between the two. To paraphrase him, in order to find out how the two go together, we need to realign the objects so that we, the viewing apparatus and the object in question, are tested against a third thing…which is impossible. There is no third point of view, in the theory of relativity. Results always come from the position of the viewing apparatus, as it cannot be outside itself. Philosophically, there’s no third view either. We may try to step out of this understanding, out of the metaphysician’s realm, but all attempts to determine the root of discourse find themselves mired in the failure to fully explain the framing of that discourse. To put it another way, Zizek notes that antiphilosophy is at the heart of philosophy. With each failure to explain antiphilosophy, we get more philosophy. With this line of reasoning, Zizek, as usual, goes through a huge nest of thinkers to demonstrate how their different philosophies circumambulate various centers of discourse:

The basic motif of antiphilosophy is the assertion of a pure presence (the Real Life of society for Marx, Existence for Kierkegaard, Will for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, etc.) irreducible to and excessive with regard to the network of philosophical concepts or representations. [. . .] The great theme of post-Hegelian antiphilosophy is the excess of the pre-conceptual productivity of Presence over its representation: representation is reduced to the “mirror of representation,” which reflects in a distorted way its productive ground (841).

Of course, Zizek wants to say that Hegel was the first to reach this irreducible ground, as the synthesis of consciousness – and he traces this through a variety of manners that is both entertaining and enlightening. But Barad’s point remains; whatever language Zizek adopts, we see the mysterious Presence continually being shuffled from point to point, which reduces all discourse to a manner of tautology:

The mistake resides in the fact that the limit pertaining to the form itself (to the categories used) is misperceived as a contingent empirical limitation. In the case of cognitivism: it is not that we already have the categorical apparatus necessary to explain consciousness (neuronal process, etc), and our failure to have yet done so pertains only to the empirical limitation of our knowing the relevant facts about the brain; the true limitation lies in the very form of our knowledge, in the very categorical apparatus we are using. In other words, the gap between the form of knowledge and its empirical limitation is inscribed in this form itself (284).

So while we understand the mysterious Real though our a priori categories, these categories give us an incomplete view. In order to mirror ourselves with the exterior, to be “appropriate” to reality, we create a standing social order, a consistency within discourses (or many discourses themselves) each of which approach the mystery of the world from another angle. These discourses are always defractions, which are in themselves incomplete, hinging on one another but only shuffling pure Presence about. Spoken through Fichte: this absence can be expressed as antoss, or as Lacan liked to say about the Self: “I think where I am not.” This can be unpacked to mean that the self is simply what mediates itself. In this way, Hegel remains for Zizek the genius that first notices how what we read is how we read:

In this sense, it is meaningless to call Hegel’s philosophy “absolute idealism”: his point is precisely that there is no need for a Third element, the medium or Ground beyond subject and object-substance. We start with objectivity, and the subject is nothing but the self-meditation of objectivity (144, original italics).

Unpacking this thought, lets realize that not only is the self “less than nothing” but “less than nothing” is also the pure Presence mediating the discourse itself. We get the symbolic reality through the loss of pure Presence. Its lack allows us to read through it to get discursive reality as a full blown immersive social environment of culture.

I rather enjoyed this lengthy and inspired book. To be brief, Zizek does philosophy to hide the fact that philosophy no longer works, that in Heidegger’s language, philosophy has been suspended while capitalism contemplates itself. In this sense, capitalism tries to say what reason cannot (in this sense, capitalism occupies the same position as Art for Kant, that of a second nature). No wonder then that Zizek says philosophy stopped with Hegel, that the many guises of Hegel are in fact not-Hegel or a stunted Hegel so that we can continue on with postmodernism, with the avant garde, because we haven’t learned Hegel yet… so we hide him away while we continue on in endless jouissance. So to cut to the chase:

In every discourse, in every sense-making, we either sacrifice completeness or we sacrifice contingency. Master discourses (like that of Gods) generally sacrifice contingency to create completeness, to wrap us in universals, to guarantee the universe be stable for us to live in. But in all of these cases (and you can go on ad infinitum), you will end up asking, why is there necessity? As in is there a “necessity particle” that makes existence be (as existence itself is without cause)? Why are things even necessary? Is there pure being somewhere? Zizek’s answer is to locate the split of symbolic reality (necessity) and the Real together within the subject, that only through a split subject do we get contingency as the only necessity. Our ability to understand is then only supplemented through both Reason and an encounter with the Real that stands in to verify the completeness of discursive truth. For Zizek the subject’s being split is another way of saying that necessary to subjectivity is the provision of what needs to be included within its view, of what cannot be compromised. Zizek provides the example where some Christians replied to Darwinism by insisting that the world was 4,000 years old, that fossils were placed in the Earth to test faith. Zizek doesn’t believe this to be true but he cites this example to show that the “grain of truth” in the Christian example is their

impossible-Real objectal counter-part which never positively existed in reality – it emerges through its loss, it is directly created as a fossil. [T]he exclusion of this object is consistitutive of the appearance of reality: since reality (not the Real) is correlative to the subject, it can only constitute itself through the withdrawal from it of the object which “is” the subject [. . .] What breaks up the self-closure of transcendental correlation is thus not the transcendent reality that eludes the subject’s grasp, but the inaccessibility of the object that “is” the subject itself. This is the true “fossil,” the bone that is the spirit, to paraphrase Hegel, and this object is not simply the full objective reality of the subject [. . .] but the non-corporeal, fantasmatic lamella. (645).

This is another way of encountering the symbolic Real, the meaningless floating signifier that would guarantee completeness, that is the subject in its actualization. Be this ontology, money, or joy, fear, anxiety, love, mana or luck, such signifiers often allow discourse to hinge on these terms in order for that discourse to continue to be relevant, a kind of antiphilosophy in the heart of philosophy or antilaw at the heart of law. Zizek writes

Every signifying field thus has to be “sutured” by a supplementary zero-signifier, a “zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the necessity of a supplementary symbolic content over and above that which the signified already contains.” This signifier is “a symbol in its pure state”: lacking any determinate meaning, it stands for the presence of meaning and such in contrast to its absence, in a further dialectical twist, the mode of appearance of this supplementary signifier which stands for meaning as such is non-sense [. . .]. Notions like mana thus “represent nothing more or less that floating signifier which is the disability of all finite thought. (585, original italics).

So is there any way to get out? The only meaningful answer is no, as to escape pure Presence is to fall into non-sense, or at least a difference sense that is non-sense from where we current are. Even attempt to transgress the limits of the law end up invoking the law in its transgressed form, simply because those forms are how we understand. This is how the Real becomes mirrored within the symbolic as the pure form of the symbolic. The symbolic Real, which is what Zizek would call meaningless encodings necessary to moor our consistency (our discourse, so to speak), operates through the contingencies qua Real, a maneuver of the subject to mediate itself and actualize.

At this point, to recognize a new thing, like a new world order, or a solution from our capitalist dilemma, means coming to new coordinates, a new phenomenon, a new axis. Zizek locates this between drive and reason, to have the two come together. You can read this like the unification of money with language, but he leaves it open, because after all, these are metaphysical terms. Directly speaking, such terms are always beyond our understanding, lacking substance, even as they are always within the area delineated by our pure understanding, but completely impotent to interrupt our world and realign it. All we need is the right content to come along, the right void to allow us to rename it, and recognize it as the new event, in the language of Nietzsche, “the eternal return.” With that, we could have a new epoch, a new pure Presence emerging from nothingness itself, and that new Presence would be a new world order, a new symbolic Real to realign our world, to remake our world. Compared to anything in or current state it would be more than anything, a new nothing from which there would never be any possibility of return as we would irreparably be someone else.

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being and identity and reality

April 11, 2014 / alex posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, life as we know it, manifesto, note to self, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

I think much of politics stems from identity construction. Most discussions about identity are approached from the question of the Other — include them or teach them or change them. But really, any position of otherness must be mediated by what the Self is. The self mediating the self is the “invisible” point of reference that creates this initial distortion.

Post race isn’t exactly the same as post identity. Even if it’s a class distinction or, say, identifying as a “punk” which means “I’m real” then others who are not punk are “sell outs.”. Identity works that way.

So being American. Being a man. Being your age. Your personal history your children’s future your parent’s past your politics your sexuality your (in)unique soul. These are still pretty much identity construction that traps us as being a type and others as not being us. Except for genuine interaction, which basically needs both sides of the interaction to shed the image of itself, the Other is always a mirror that reflects back to us our negative that is not-me.

These groups of similar mes that see me as being us organizes groups, and super-groups. This organizationing(s) “hows” how we talk to one another and share resources/work. But each group, and group of groups also describe it’s own outside. You have to be outside the outside, to really step away. This organization/description/structure is not accidentally, how things are supposed to be. Based, on the outside of itself, it has to be this way, as defined by the outside that is not itself defining itself. So, each grouping also describes it’s own outside or “rebellion”. Being a punk is inscribed at the heart of being a sell-out. So it really seems impossible to step out of this reality.

But I guess that really doesn’t matter. Most people just want to fit in somewhere and be themselves. Lol, be who their identity tells them they are.

entry for no one

March 3, 2012 / alex posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, universal nothing / No Comments

in a time magazine article the most significant thing i found was a single line saying, “america’s unofficial religion of personal self transformation”

this is true, i feel. and nowhere can it be better exemplified than on the internet where people write about things they are doing and going through.

also, our commercials are so terrible. so wonderful at being terrible. the marketing for any product becomes a hermenuetics exercise to deploy it so it’s central to whatever it we are doing. products are angling that way too; not just like children’s cereal where it’s coco for coco puffs, or trix — not even fantasy nonsense, like lowes wants you to catalog everything your house is made of so you can plan your improvements on there. the deployment is to centralize everything. facebook or microsoft’s the cloud, whatever, my phone (the android one, i have two cell phones) is in some sense more important than my wallet! (although more secure..)

so the connection is that products can transform you too. make you a better person. re-center you. like religion or jesus or a good song… transformative. everything is transformative. embrace the mysticism. those pictures and text ppl are posting on fb now, an extension of lolcats and those inspirational posters — they are so misleading. those universal statements dont mean anything. they are quick bits that may or may not be applied as one likes. but reading it can make you feel good. it’s hypocritical CRAP that can be as a quick justification for any kind of good or bad behavior.

are we so lost that we can’t think for ourselves? we need random one-liners to let us feel like we are making progress?

the whole stupidity of the self transformation junk is that we aren’t transforming anywhere. we dont have a goal, or even a path to find anything. its like some bad acid trip that doesn’t lead anywhere or do anything. it’s not even enough to say this: Report: it all some kind of sick joke because to say the universe cares or not cares, or that it is playing a joke already says too much. anthromorphozie anything you like but it doesn’t lead to any real relationships. lacan was somewhat right — there are no real relationships, only shared fantasies that match up incidentally. if we can’t even see eye to eye with each other what chance is there for us to comprehend what goes on around us?

i suppose the easiest thing to do would be to narrow the scope. fuck the rest of the world, this is about America. or this is about my Family. Or our small group of friends, or even Los Angeles… in our post-cold war environment we still live with the spectre of the apocalypse, and in that sense, we already live in the post-apocalyptic world. we live it daily, pondering disaster scenarios; who we would try to band with, what matters to us when the clock resets… even if it’s only in genre zombie films… so we narrow it to the small band of strangers we are with on a multi-player game on the internet, or whatever — and so meaning has its place in tiny day to day movements, such as get this loan funded, or drive to this place and get a meal with a friend. you could live your life in vietnam so to speak, only worry about yourself day to day and all your past life is so far away.

after 9/11 happened some of us found out or whatever and didnt think much of it. i still drove to school even after my mom told me the 1st tower had been hit (i was in bed). traffic was horrible. i heard about the 2nd tower on my way to school on the radio. i got really good parking. the class was taoism, the first time i was taking it. the professor, a really old woman from montana with bright blue eyes, stood as straight as a rail and was a pedagogical nazi said a few worlds that we needed to hear. our class was there at 1030, mostly because we didn’t know what else to do… and she dismissed us for 2 weeks saying that everyday there is pain around us, all around the world. we just dont always know it because it’s not always in our face. but to be one with the world is to understand that pain is there, and to deal with it daily on a moment to moment basis. and not just pain, but happiness and joy and suffering — all of it at once. not about the things we are limited to in our immediate surrounding but also the whole spectrum of possible feeling. this is something that a sage gets and can deal with, not more easily, but is more prepared for because the spectrum is always open.

transformation is a stupid word. because only when we have a script in a movie, the clever ending is one in which we find we have the answer already. the clever loop gives us back our ability to deal with our depression because we had the answer all along — or we are the answer (like 5th element). and of course, yes, a movie is manufactured, with scripting and acting and takes 1 2 3 and writers and sets… but that’s just one possible narrative of all the narratives that happen simultaneously all the time. its just that the space and time continuum selects for just one narrow band at a time. the virtual unity is omnipresent and is not peaceful, or happy or blissful or accepting. it’s got everything all at once. like when krnsa revealed to arjuna his ‘real face’ in the bhagavad gita and arjuna (who is the avatar for the god indra but does not know it) is scared shitless seeing the naked face of a god…but only able in his mortal form to see just a part of that sublime texture. and that’s not ironic or anything. it’s just that our language based metaphysics which only abstractly supports intuitive concepts like “ontology” is unable to grasp situations that originate out of context, out of the humanity which is the foundation for language.

ive been watching alot of tv lately as my mind has been unable to function. i think i am not inspired by a task i see so clearly in the abstract but when writing it out becomes garbled…

steven colbert told a joke to a minister it went something like this.. an atheist committed suicide. he went to heaven and met god and he was like omg! i was wrong, all this, i was so wrong. there is a heaven! and a god! and why aren’t i in hell? don’t ppl who commit suicide go to hell? and god said yes, but it’s complicated. after all, everyone who has ever been has contemplated suicide at one point. in fact, i thought of doing it once. and the atheist said, well, why didn’t you? what stopped you? well, god said, i thought, what if this is all there is?

you know, the language that surrounds the thesis statement makes the difference. in phrases like “i always sit up straight because i am worried someone will see me” are always ambiguous to me. even if i agree with the first part, the reason for it may not be something i agree with. so do i agree with the conclusion because it’s the conclusion (sitting up straight) even though the reason for it may be completely off? do i vote for a candidate who will effect the changes i want even if he is a complete loon? do actions speak louder than words? and if they do, if actions is all that matters, then actually, there is no such thing as a lie and the entire edifice of language is only for its perlocutionary acts… and i guess, this means that truth is really only the lie — the ultimate lie — that is there is truth… there must be truth, so that we can do what we need to do.

eg, it doesnt matter if nature dies, or if humankind exists, only that the last human alive has a “happy life”. and for all intents and purposes you are the last human alive.

whatever “happy life” means.

so there you go. there’s the clever line. it returns us back to what we knew before, another selected potential in the virtual narrative web of all realities. living life in that abstract, is a dance — select the appropriate form of all possible* forms you have at your disposal.

*possible or potential is wrong here, because when i say virtual i mean that it’s real, just as real as what is reality, the difference is that the virtual is not-selected. while i use potential and virtual near-interchangably, strictly speaking, possible means that it is only different from reality in that it lacks reality. virtual is real in that the relationships are real, just not expressed.

not-being here

February 24, 2012 / alex posted in images of being-human, Uncategorized, universal nothing / No Comments

Kristeva explains abjection as an excess of uncaptured emotion. She uses the word ‘chora’ which comes from greek, something about empty vessels. Energy that is loose. Uncaptured emotion can levitate internal signs, giving to feelings of euphoria, or of mystical revelation.

Uncaptured emotion too, can lead to excessive disgust, the threat of degradation, of disrupting what we hold to be true. Trying to step people out of their box, when they don’t ask for it, often leads to an unconscious warding of this disgust. Question too hard and you will destroy their precious containers, ruin their beloved files. As such, they will try and explain away the threads you create for them, that lead them out of their box. Patch up the holes, and say, hey, this makes no sense.

When it does make sense, its just that they don’t want to go there.

Careful or you’ll break society for them.

Of course, you won’t break society for them. They’ll realign it, just at a different level, and incorporate your new information as a ‘negative’ in their schema.

For Kristeva at least, it’s all a matter of semiotics, of texts, of signs and their captured emotion. Captured emotion is determinate, discrete and safe. Poetry, for example, looses these bonds by butting signs against one another in new ways. Little sparks of emotion are let loose and that feels exciting. For some, poetry is abject. They don’t want that loose emotion rolling around. What are you supposed to do with it? For others, it’s pleasurable because they can roll with it.

Kristeva says poetry will change society by introducing new meanings. Nowadays, poetry is the least of our concerns. There’s plenty more on youtube that introduce new significations… for example… in an “in your face” kind of way.

One thing in common with euphoria and abjection is that the excess of emotion always trails off into the void of the unsignified. This may be a cosmic expression of the Sacred Other or it could be a horrific abyss where we lose touch with everything. This is actually both, depending deployment.

Still though, to say this is real and expect that all emotion be encapsulated, that the mystery itself be contained, is perhaps asking too much of intellect. Knowing how it happens, or knowing tragedy is such depending on one’s point of view does not eliminate the void, and its powerful statement it makes on us, the void in each of us.

What I am indirectly talking about appears to be jnana — one of the indian paths to enlightenment, not by love, (as with hari krishna for example, devotion to krishna) but through knowledge… but really I am speaking of how the void lives in all of us and we are the void. To be in it and one with it, approaches the vector of calmness. Sort of a reverse game of ‘who has it’ which is how we view Supermen, like Natman, or has the understanding/key to everything… except in this one we see that the one ‘who has it’ actually does not, and while he appears to, presents to everyone else that they really do not have it.

at this point you might as well read this article by roger ebert: being there

the game of tag

February 17, 2012 / alex posted in universal nothing / No Comments

Looney toons always has a pair. One who “gets it” and one who fails.

Pairs, like Tweety and Sylvester. Or Wile E Coyote. Maybe in some complexity of three with Tom and Jerry (and that bulldog), but mostly in regards to two, such as Bugs and Daffy or Bugs and Elmer Fudd.

These scenes resemble little more than snapshots of complex schemes often with little change between how one scene connects with next; they all occupy the same region; they are interchangable; syntagmatic.

Contrary with more contemporary cartoons, these looney tunes begs the question; who are we to identify with? How do we enter into the narrative? We relate with one or the other: The one who struggles with desire or the one who achieves mastery?

“meep meep.”

Neither position really presents much in the way of identification — at least for modern audiences. In such vignettes, at least for me, my interest is in the interplay between the one who “gets it” and the attempts of one who does not.

I guess in that sense, Venture Brothers is the same way. Only they all pretty much fail.

No one gets anything. Not the Guild and not O.C.I..

Even the super secret agents get confused about the counter plot. Don’t you see? It’s all just a test to prove your mettle, to see if you ‘get it’ or not!

Even the super powerful agent Brock Samson is at times reduced to an angry gorilla. ‘Getting it’ depends largely on understanding your role at all times, and no one can do that. Everyone fails at some point, with the twists and turns in the plots and complex schemes. We can’t always see how we stand with or among others.

What’s intriguing in Venture Brothers is that despite super science and heros and villains a reoccurring theme appears with older characters who have given it up.

So then theres “life outside discourse” where you “settle down”… (Venture Brothers episode 406)

This is very insulating, in the sense that we are walking into a dichotomy. Whether it is “settling down” or ruling the world, Everyone wants the dream-life. In the larger picture, we just don’t know what the idea ‘it is’ or ‘how it could be’. Again, those who ‘get it’… are who we want to be, if its the start of a career as a super scientist or one who is washed up at the end of it and ‘knows better’.

I think that kind of story (finding your way in or out of a discourse) is more interesting than ones where “the course of discourse must be decided” on “the battlefield”

Examples of the latter? Like Bravehart or Twilight or Star Wars… (we won’t talk about these because they are really boring as the ‘answer’ is obvious from the start, the journey is supposedly in the resolution of the conflict, but it is ‘safe’ conflict as the ending is pretty much guaranteed.)

An example of the former?

Married with Children is one example of the former. So life is gappier. You talk the big talk, Al Bundy (or Marcy Darcy or whoever) but then through the twists and turns you are revealed to be empty. To be a fraud, to only have your dreams. Dreams no one else really cares about.

Do you get it?

In Venture Brothers, the character we follow, for whom things are revealed, must always ‘figure it out’. The colorful side characters always ‘know more’ or ‘know nothing’ but become part of the tapestry as mastermind or victim/bystander.

There is a third kind of discursive position though, one in which things are arrows, in terms of maintaining the discourse.

Sitcoms repeat drive states until one character “gets how to deal with that imbalance” before life can return to its normal repetition.

IRL is probably more like sitcoms, although sometimes we think it’s about “getting it” in which case we think others “get it” and we try to “get it” too, or at least fool others into think we “get it” until we actually become one of those who “get it”. This is best seen in business where new businesses spend an inordinate amount of time convincing others they are legitimate….

The problem with imbalance and return is that IRL there’s really nothing to return to.

Just like there ain’t a discourse that’s inscibed in the cosmos, only ones inscribed in us. And we select from those partial lines.

IRL is like a bad play that just won’t end.

If, like the current movie, j Edgar, maybe we can improve the narrative if we tell it out if order so it’s not a flat narrative in which we repeat cycles. But why not sacrifice ‘realism’ if you are going to step Outside the chronological line and stage a trial by gods where j Edgar must recall his life in purgatory and judge himself…

So the conflict is drawn out — already j Edgar relies on voice overs and incidential parallels in time to explain the character reasoning which we wouldn’t otherwise get without it. In fact, the movie starts off with j Edgar relating to an agent to write a book; he supplies a narrative in order to reconstruct his own life, suggesting for us that he is the mastermind of his own plot — (calling into question what for us, might be the actual meaning).

This is very IRL — when here on the blogosphere, or with friends, we explain how we were in the recent past — to give continuity and identity to our current actions. We explain ourselves into a discourse, bring others into the fold so as to legitimize what we are doing right now.

For j Edgar, the voice belongs to a disembodied super ego which lasts beyond the narrator’s own death. But wouldn’t it be more interesting if the voice overs was the disembodied id and the determination in the scenes was due to the superego attempting to weave a dignified plot line?

As it is, the movie starts out it was the ego but it shifted when you caught up to the ‘narrative present’…

And then confusingly surpassed it.

Over all, with j edgar, it’s too easy to understated. The movie asks the wrong questions. We want to make a tragic figure? But it was too much a victimization…

Aristolean conflicts with the cobbled story line not withstanding.

If we could be explorers. Would it be best told as Marlowe or as Kurtz?

Between Naruto and Sasuske the story is told by the witness, Sakura. Not by Sherlock Holmes, but by Watson, a bystander.

Cuz, you know, Sakura is otherwise worthless. And that is the role others play for us, to witness it, and share it, to legitimize it. The crow lets the pawnshop owner to live and run back and ‘tell the tale’ so that others may know his story. Others can ‘get it’ too.

so, back to that shared discourse, it is the effort to legitimize our behavior within a symbolic (larger social reality) which Lacan was able to extract from Freud and speak of it directly without Freud’s troublesome metaphor.

I think that is pretty much Lacan right there; we get a calculas of who ‘gets it’ and ‘who does not’ and how we are each frauds — without substance and with substance– but in different ways. I think if there is a lesson to be learned is that we must not believe in the ‘getting it’ that ought to be gotten. That even adults are frauds, and that everyone is nothing in the face of the awesome sublime. Nonetheless, some ppl can be okay with nothing, and the job of an analyst is to help you become okay with nothing. And that ppl who are okay with nothing have nothing over those who are not okay with nothing. That there is no difference, and it is this nothing that makes no difference difference with everything.

I mean, yeah, zizek says that too. But he says more than that, although its not much more… its this nothing that really helps you see where Zizek and Buddhism collide. Actually it’s fuzzy in my head, but I think Zizek did mention it, in some book, I forget where, at the end of Parallax Gap, maybe. I saw it years before he wrote that book, but someone was bound to eventually point it out in print.

Zizek himself said it. Because then at that point, he ‘got it’ too.

metaphysics of anti-presence OR without “ontic” context there is no ontological

January 19, 2012 / alex posted in Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

(written about a month or so ago)

i suppose that thanksgiving is when one is supposed to be reminded to be thankful. while this in principle, is the same for pilgrims as us, i don’t believe it to be the most useful of things to do with our time.

if anything we ought to be “thankful” all the time. but that’s not even a question of giving thanks… as it begs the question, thanks to who? even the universe in general isn’t good enough, because it implies that if one is thankful for one day then — you can take advantage of everything all the rest of the days?

what an utterly and ridiculous notion!

i have been trying to stay away from some of the pitfalls of philosophy. see, it’s not a matter of specific knowledge it’s more of the way in which we apply our thoughts. philosophy as an exercise isn’t the extrapolation of “key points”, that is something anyone and everyone can does — stoners especially. what makes something philosophy is the consideration of these key points within a territory of meta-physics. so while there are some artists that certainly give philosophical critiques, and i know of some, they are still not, strictly speaking, philosophers.

so for example — how the paragraph above applies to me — would go something like this… something i might’ve done (but have not, to the best of my knowledge) is approach someone who is claiming to not be a philosopher because he is proposing an anti-metaphysics and say to him loudly: THE NEGATION OF A METAPHYSICS IS A METAPHYSICS

which in a philosophical sense, is definitely be true. and is true in a heideggerian kind of way. but really is not a useful thought to anyone except philosophers.

so you get trapped, see? once you unconsciously apply that context, you’re kinda stuck addressing context, which is slippery and hard to define.

so this question of thanks, or not thanks, is really a false dichotomy. you can have a day of thanks and still be thankful. all the time.

lately though, i have been disgusted with the world we are living in. from consumerism, to everything else. it seems there is too much baggage around. and what is one to do? go to your parents or your whoever and say, look, you know and i know x y z is supposed to happen but let’s agree not to play that game and be genuine with one another… and deal with one another on the basis of a natural ethics.

even if they agree, and didn’t decide you were looney and trying to impose a crap load of your own constructions onto them, it’s almost laughable that there be some genuine authentic human being underneath all of these games. i mean, how many of you women would be willing to give up your identity and learned behaviors of womanhood? if you address the question to men it’s even stickier because most men may be aware of “being a man” of when they are to do that kind of “man thing”, but at the same time, how many of them are really willing to give it up? being a man is more socially “default” than being a woman, so it’s harder to realize when you are “being yourself” and when you are “being a man”. in fact, i would argue that its impossible for many men since we are so much “ourself” “a man”.

after all, women can wear pants and ppl don’t really care…

so its kind of like, give up what? let’s imagine i was trying to fit in. and that i am making myself miserable doing it. so i stop “fitting in”. but what does that mean? how do i earn a living? and at what point should i no longer stop giving things up, and accept that i have reached my genuine self. so.. okay, we can agree that i am not cut out to be a finance person. i admit that. i suck at it. and i get lost easily in finance (but not math)… and i don’t have patience for it. so i can stop that. but does that mean i need to stop working? if i want to stop doing sales, fine. im not an extrovert, and it drains me alot to talk to ppl. but does that mean i stop being self-employed? who am i really? that’s a really really REALLY dumb question though, because it doesn’t go anywhere. am i assuming that i have an inner fireman (or some other job) i can channel and suddenly discover that i need to reorient my life in a cosmological way and that cosmology happens to correspond to a banal everyday job THAT I CAN DO IN LA IN THE EARLY 21st CENTURY AND STILL BE “FIT IN” to the larger society? its kind of a tall order to think that ideal something would make everything “work”.

see, it’s easy to locate conflict in the local. like, oh it’s my coworker(s) that make me unhappy, or its the fact that i need to make 20k more or that my gf isn’t the right person… but it’s much harder to reasonably assume that local conflicts do not result from global fissures.

in one sense it’s easy to say, oh, everything is local. so if i have a problem with my mother, it’s not pathological — meaning it’s not a structural issue in how i make my surroundings/relationships. that if i run away from home, i won’t have a similar problem with someone else, elsewhere. so the presence of conflicts in the local do not assume that problems aren’t global too. but absence doesn’t work that way. should everything be okay locally, then we suddenly don’t care about the global… since our experience of the global is always mediated by the local.

this is still pretty mundane. on thanksgiving you can say, oh, i love you ppl! you ppl who want to spend it with me! and that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? that’s what any holiday is about, spending it with those unique others. there isn’t a magical soulmate you haven’t yet, or the perfect family you have to find and become — this is the moral conclusion of any good thanksgiving family movie. and that conclusion lends itself to supposing a radical absence of the global all together.

and this is where things get a little hairy.

because there isn’t a cosmological signifiance to the global. global is only a position we reify ourselves — through our pathology or the repetition of our situation. conflicts in the local originate from the vehicles of how we situate or deploy things that happen around us. we repeat our histories because we recreate those contexts. this is pretty plain psychoanalysis-wise but the larger situation i am attempting to express is one devoid of oedipus, symbolic regimes or other meta-physical crap. we can and should suppose the global as the vanishing mediator by which we explain and interface with our surroundings, but we should not limit our surroundings to this global mediation! (maybe zizek would say at this point, who cares about the cosmos? only global only global. but no, the property isnt transitive, there is a parallax)

but not to get side-tracked:

reality is not the pawn of ideas. reality may be a playground for ideas to find expression, but the ghost always needs a body. it’s in the body that a ghost becomes real — not the other way around. rather, ideas are the pawn of reality. we can play with them, and create them but they ultimately only remain facets of our own distinction having ‘reality’ only when we align them with the actual happenings in reality.

reality is not limited to the ideas we have in our head. i think this kind of rationalization is very very damaging. i see this happening alot in political discourse, or in social situations where 1) individuals assume others embody a principle or 2) individuals or situations are defined in terms of a principle.

both are limiting behaviors and discard the larger reality which has no principle or idea. one might as well assume there is an evil in the world, originating from a particular source. it’s like harry potter defeating whatever his face is. he removes evil from the world, so now we can never have evil ever again.

or in some other stories, where there is one good, like if some super mad scientist found where jesus lived and decided to imprision jesus. oh no, make that santa claus. now there’s no xmas.

like that.

human beings may construct for the larger society, a discourse of thanks, or political salvation or what have you, but that discourse is reality only for the people who accept the temporal context or the narrative context. this is a very powerful thing to have happen, but it’s also very damaging for us, because we become blind to what we are doing and what we are not only thinking we are doing but what else we are actually doing (to ourselves or others). i am not advocating a return to gaia or that we need to live with one with nature — or embrace our biological imperative — those discourses are also a return to the ‘true authentic self’ which are defined by anthropomorphosizing concepts. nature is a concept. biological imperatives are concepts. i don’t mean to say that concepts are not real, just that are they are not definitively real, inscribed in the cosmological void! the global exists too, but only for the one, not for the cosmos. this is what hegel means when he talks about universal vs the Notion, but that’s for a different time.

so what does it leave us? with an authentic…. what? one might as well assume that chimps have biological imperatives and study them in labs. removing one from the situation is to defamiliarize that removed one.

i kind of want to move away from this now, because i am skirting on this notion of ‘choice’ and ‘free will’ which is too much to get into right now. a good example of how discourse and pre-conceived notions comes into play is in the discursive writings of evolutionary psychologists… who presuppose natural identity for man and woman since the dawn of time. or who ‘discover’ our ‘true nature’ as some kind of social evolution concurrent with our biological evolution. for example, seeing ‘modern hunter gatherers’ as ‘a window to our prehistoric man’ is both racist and ignoring the fact that the present is not the past’s present. the present in the past is gone, and the past’s present seen today is a very different thing than the past’s past. unfortunately like all discourses, the precepts of that discourse create the conditions for fulfilling and expressing that discourse. if ‘we’, the contemporary man, are the pinnacle of evolution then we deserve what we got. those who are ‘lesser’… well, you get it. most of discourse is, is to narratively sort out other people and to tell us how to treat them and deal with them.

so we know ourselves in the process through the global mediation of the narrative about other people.

i guess i could have said all of this, after thinking about it and procrastinating on my CEU (continuing education units) by saying for this entry

1. there isn’t anything to be thankful about, except that you can be thankful
2. there is no (big Other) to be thankful to.
3. you aren’t being thankful, it’s your role in the story to be thankful… because there is no real you, only your body and your projected identity.

but look at this. haven’t i narratively told you who you are, how to deal with other people and how you can fulfill and express yourself?

i have! but only if you believe in this discourse, of course.

on nil

August 19, 2011 / alex posted in dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, universal nothing / No Comments

(from twitter)

what’s odd about nothing is that there are 3 kinds of nothing: 1.absence of anything, 2.absence of change and 3.absence of a particular x.

in programming terms, this analogizes to 1. null, 2. loops and 3. zero.

what’s further odd about zero is that in languages like php, zero can be the value zero, empty, null or one. this 0 = 1 is a 4th kind of zero.

i think this overlap has to do with either specific content, the context of expression or the structure of expression —

all of which may be nil.

the most basic nil is in the structure of expression — which is the kantian negativity. context of expression is hegelian negation (zizek)

and of course specific content is what we are most familiar with and deal with everyday. in culture finding the hegelian negation is akin

to finding the “species which is its own genus” as zizek says, the primary case. something i think south park keeps trying to hit.

of course that’s also philosophy’s goal too, to explicate the zero point of structure, find the root of being all that jazz.

the purest case with the simpliest move. we can always tailor our structure to support other items “a priori”, in theory.

Zeros in numbers are a purely expressive entity but as such refers to what would otherwise be uncaptured substance.

Saying that is like making digital analogue. An mp3 recorded on vinyl.

The inexpressible is expressible by virtue of the concept of the negative, by voids in expressive structure.

This is not to confuse a deployed camera’s negation with the negativity of blackness on a movie screen.

Where hegel abuts universality in force is like law taking onto account violations by being more strict than necessary.

Or like good design swallowing common human error.

This is what theoloticians may mean by taking about human freewill made compossible with god’s supreme will VIA Jesus, god as man.

(post-twitter)

god’s will must encompass everything, including that which is free of god.

that’s where determinism and freewill intermix, in a figure like jesus. jesus acts as the central binding agent on the way to universality, as petit objet a, the stain of god on man, a stand in for the subjectivity/godhood.

but if jesus is the stand in, and jesus is negative, how can god be negative? not just in terms of not-man and not-god but also as zero qua one (as stated above).

what’s particularly interesting in this is that in the fullest level beyond universality, hegel still insists on the emptiness of the notion beyond the traditional readings of dialectics.

in a very real way, negation for hegelian dialectics is necessary — one can’t have universality without taking into account that which is not explicated.

joan copjec in her brilliant essay ‘body as viewing instrument or the strut of vision’ takes heed of this when she explains how renaissance painting isn’t simply a field. the field from the subject projects an idealized viewing point just behind the head of a viewer situated squarely before the painting. the ‘final’ negative acts as the last suture, by taking into account that final kernel of understanding — rooted from the subject.

this brings us beyond negation into universality — but the step beyond negation qua universality is to consider the totality itself as self-determining — that Emptiness is Godhood itself which can only be expressed as the zero-sum of structure.

once again, we find ourselves enwrapped in a kantian lock-box of phenomenon — only this time there isn’t a noumenality by which we cannot know, for the noumenal is included as part of the structure itself like how phenomenon is structured.

if anything, at this point we’ve aligned the first three nils on one another: content, expression and structure like an empty structured database, or a spread sheet or pivot table without data, devoid of content. virtually there but inexpressed. what we’ve ended with is the last kind of zero, where it acts in a higher level as one.

this is simply because while one is a totality when viewed from the outside –from a position of immanence, one is needed as zero to establish metaphysics of presence, marking a structural change from pure absence to a structured presence. in terms of programming, a zero is already one bit. a nothing wouldn’t even show up and cannot be considered.

an interesting consequence of this concept of zeroth-ing is to understand that subjectivity itself is the zero point sum, the empty category that establishes the modal structure of renaissance order. this seems to suggest that we understand others as a consequence of our own singularity.

but this grasp of subjectivity as zero misses the point, for we have a totality as one in subjectivity already.

so where is the nil point that is pre-subject?

copjec talks of the gaze as the field that cleaves and binds; for if the subject is us, what does our presence guarantee? how does being one equate to being zero? it is in the consequences of getting to be one that we already assume a zero — in Lacanian language it is the Other that bounces off subjectivity in so as subjectivity requires others. what copjec calls the gaze guarantees both subject and object and acts as the originary marking place. they are dual views of the same situation.

therein lies the structural difference by which noumenal and phenomenal are cleaved, inexplicable but also nil. the ground of being separate must be established before being can be, a crux of psychoanalysis from motherandchild to i and you. in each point epistemologically, we must have the empty container-notion which can contain it all, and is rightly not anything. The set of all sets is not really a set, it is the empty set par excellence.

the Disheartening Metonymy in Facebook

July 28, 2011 / alex posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

In the midst of the ontic we look for ontology. I started at 15 or so, with excerpts from Plato’s Republic, Carl Sagan and Nietzsche which I did not understand at all and did not get past the first few pages.

It is in this search for ontology that one will digest, and read, and seek for a center.

I think most will do this, perhaps, when things are bad or chaotic.

Beyond ontology however, we slip into a regime of mirrors, a hall of confusion by which we must choose that which has Being, a contest between beings which ends either in nihilism, a rejection of ontology or a dogmatic stand that this arbitrary figure is not at all arbitrary and in fact has the real deal. The stand most often occurs with what feels certain, what gives the subject certainty and what the subject likes most naturally.

Many of us don’t share any given subject’s appraisal of Being. Pointing out that this reliance on a figurehead is arbitrary gives rise to relativism and humor which is most prevalent on the underbelly of the internet.

It is in this reliance of values and the questioning of values which I take to be central to any question, something I like to point that Heidegger ended his career with.

The problem now, that I see it, stems from a collapse of long term and short term, personal and public spaces. I don’t believe that what’s good for an individual is good for society and vis versa. But how our legal and political system runs most effectively collapses all these different regimes such that we are slipping into a slow paralysis. We are choking ourselves with the weight of not only ourselves but those before and after us for whom we represent and stand in for. In the interest of American Brotherhood (of equals) each us has access to the universal but it is that access which gives rise to the oppression of living fragmented, dual lives. We can’t deal with each other as individuals but each interaction becomes of political and social significance. Talking to an Other on the bus becomes a gesture of political multicultural relativism. Dealing with your boss or employee becomes not just a negotiation of your individual and professional interests, but also a meter between how any boss or employee should/not interact (Thank you for pointing this out, Walter Olsen). Judges today sometimes cannot pass verdicts they may see as appropriate because they may set precedence for future situations which are undesirable.

We live not just in the present but in the past and the future simultaneously.

This happens as every instance of a category becomes a stand-in for the relations inherent in the category. In otherwords, any employee becomes synonymous with the legitimate boundaries allowable (or not) by every employee.

Of course, some measure of categorization must be appropriate — we must classify in order to better deal with the extraordinary difference out there on the street. But it is the centrality of categorization and classification qua primary that gives rise to the proliferation ontic-value confusion. In the quest of ontological signifiance, we skew via a set of values qua necessary and that proliferation of values generates multiple ontologies which are a priori incompossible (cannot coexist in the same world) leading to nihilism or, that proliferation produces a heady multiculturalist categorization which is inherently racist and Other — threatening both to make each us of into one of five or seven power rangers (of different color and manner but of “equal” ability and status) while obscurating what the purpose of ontological centered-ness is (the actual people in the suits).

So to get out of this skew, we might seek the beyond of values as Nietzsche had suggested. In doing so, we establish for ourselves our own primary motion, that which cannot be but imitated. This is the wet dream of the Uberman, something I do not believe in as it sounds nice on paper but in real life gives rise to dickish, assholish pieces of garbage which often are shadows of what might be an original. (Their lack of originality stems from a production of signs meant to signify originality — insufficient for the condition of Uberman status anyhow).

So my response?

I think my humor has moved into the inappropriate for the most part — as any movement to ontologize values is laughable. So I laugh, and that’s what’s ridiculous (my response). But when you think about it, it’s really the ontologization of values which is something laughable, not the people who seek ontology! Doing something like ontologizing values gives rise to a constant checking of behavior — which in some sense is better than living however you like while preaching the gospel — but it’s a losing battle. We don’t need more special cases — we don’t need more “races” of humans. We exist on Earth, we don’t need the attempt at radical proliferation like it’s Star Trek.

We simply need more application of the generic instance and a refusal to insist on “common sense”.

What I mean by that is that we cannot be beholden to a race of Others for fear of offending them — that’s not the point (since we offend ppl who are like us anyway). For each of us live within the fuzzy range of probable acceptability where we coexist (peaceably, hopefully). For it is in that semi-conscious realm that the foundations for our human interaction are generated and contested and it is because this generation and judgement is in some sense only by partial choice that we cannot solely have nihilism, multiculturalism or Ontology. We cannot lose our values but we cannot ontologize them either, for they these are only metonymetic towards a singular Being — they are not condusive to point to a Way as while there may be Being, there is no universal.

What Facebook has taught me is that I find myself somewhat affronted by individuals’ reliance on signifiers of what’s Real in everyday life, whether they be carriers of “Stuff” or lessons in “Values”. In both, these statuses attempt to point the Way but in fact fail because those statuses are both generated by particular instances only the subject is privy to, and/or it relies on the particularity of the subject while deeming to be of something beyond the subject.

Oddly enough, if anything, I find this to be a real life example of Descartes’ problem of multiple mental realms. Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am, but where I think there are no others. So while I think therefore I am is also Others are where I do not think and I am where Others are not.

(Don’t worry, no Lacan today) but this is the parable of the modern horror movie — they jump out unexpectedly.

So to wrap it up, these thoughts, as perpetrated by others, signify, despite intent, the values they hold within their actual lifeworld and in some sense act as a kind of encompassing meta-physics of presence. That expression qua status updates in social media like Facebook and Twitter are projections of the )(in)compossible universals pointing not only to specific manifestations but also entire universes coexisting simultaneously on one’s update stream. Any one with access can see it, and each are a statement about the nature of everything around it.

I don’t portent that each person who updates their status seeks to establish their creditability as an Ontology — as I extend this blog, it may very well be that Ontology is an outdated model. But as a expression of our here and now Ontology is still something sought by individuals to be established — many of the status updates are in fact an attempts to codify what should be, be it in the form of “THIS IS EPIC” or “PEOPLE SHOULD NOT”.

When we speak of the personal, often these expressions are placed with a deleted subject. We know that someone may be sad, or that someone is angry but the “FUCK &^@%” is not in fact carrying with it a hidden “(In my honest opinion FUCK &^@%)”. And even if it was, the rejection for a place in this universe is still present against “&^@%”.

This kind of sentiment is what makes it political and ontological at the same time.

Even in broader circles, as it is, in political speak in either public broadcast media like NPR or Cable News, people still seek manifestations of the true American spirit to vote or be a particular way, or hold certain views (like ours and other someone else’s). Many liberals who are heterosexual would not engage in a non-heterosexual activity personally, but nonetheless embrace it as being allowed to be. To be an American in this sense is structurally as intolerant (of intolerants) as those who would be intolerant. THat kind of structure, found in abundance throughout political discourse seems unavoidable.

If this isn’t a throwback to a false Ontology found in pre-WW2 Heidegger, then I really have no idea what I am pointing out.

But even today as Nationalists or culturalists or multiculturalists, it is very much the establishment of Ontology(s) meant to be the inclusive bulwark against all kinds of deformations and confusions.

Why am I pointing this out? I find this kind of structuration to be abhorrent. While I do not possess any kind of “solution” to be readily expressed, to do believe that a people obsesses with Ontological establishment, even should they be unaware of doing so, is a people courting a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of reality — and all the ensuing pitfalls that come with thinking that only people like themselves* should be.

*In this case, people like themselves extends far beyond simply being of a race or even a set of values… but of fitting the very categories which we take to be the case. This is where I agree with Zizek (even though I am not a Lacanian) — the distance we need to have from these categories is itself a necessity to living a more complete life of being who we actually are… fragmented and split subjects — allowing us better to come to peace with that, as it were, “outside” of discourse….

Can we function with an outside on the inside?

July 9, 2011 / alex posted in art, dialectics, images of being-human, Theory, Universal non-all, universal nothing / No Comments

Recently, the reaction of one homosexual individual who was hurt by the hateful remark surprised me. Her response was simply that gays are common decent folk — upstanding people too — who deserve basic respect like anyone else. What’s surprising to me was that she failed to incorporate the point of view of the bigot. But then why should she? This post doesn’t explore whether or not tolerance is an issue (because it shouldn’t be), but that there are different standards of acceptability. Granted, standards are due to valuations that individuals generate — that is what makes us individuals — but is it possible that fundamental valuations be generated from a contextual position based off of the larger whole and NOT individual feelings?

I am not debating the content of her remark, but I do find her reaction and surprise itself surprising — all the more because of the obvious evidence that her verbal assailant did not consider her (as a gay) deserving of tolerance or basic respect. If there is a basic orientation to how one relates to others, it’s through the Lacanian filter of the Symbolic. The Symbolic order holds for us subjects a variety of different and individual valuations but the main function of the Symbolic is to provide orientation. The collective Symbolic regime is the resulted of a larger, abstracted social zeitgeist. How we negotiate the perceived regimes’ changing nature and what we allow or disallow provides the vehicle for politics. What we do on an individual level, such as towards our hurt friend, matters, however small. This negotiation of perceived change in the Symbolic forces personal action to be becoming-political. In a way, the hurtful remark made by the bigot is an indeterminate but discrete step.

Immaneul Wallerstein has provided a grand gesture through his World Systems Analysis which classifies a population’s attitude towards change which may be useful to our exploration: conservative, liberal and radical. Conservatives do not want change, liberals want small measured changes and radicals want a total re-orientation of the norms. Wallerstein’s classification is useful but it’s only descriptive, not an examination of the production of meaning in relation to the Symbolic function. To do that, we can turn towards Zizek’s explication of the Lacanian orders through the Gremasian square.

Gremasian Squares are one basic way of determining meaning.

The Gremasian square Zizek draws upon in For They Know Not What They Do, bounces the four positions of basic difference that create meaning surrounding the symbolic function. The four positions are:

all are submitted (S1)
only one is not submitted (~S2)
none are submitted (S2)
only one is submitted (~S1)

Zizek highlights these positions in order to explore different ‘species of judgement’ of a subject are

necessary (S1)
possible (~S2)
impossible (S2)
contingent (~S1)

The basic axis deals with the main difference of Symbolic (S1) and Real (S2). The Symbolic acts as a universal signifying function, establishing a symbolic network of linguistic meaning (S1) that is necessary for us to organize our world. At the same time, within the Real order (S2), we struggle with the impossibility of such a function existing in the universe as part of the universe. The outside Real (S2) remains indifferent and incoherent to our manifested meaning (S1). It is this interplay between impossibility (S2) and necessity (S1) that gives rise to the complexity of the system. In order to facilitate the others who approach us from the untotalizable whole of the Real (S2), we rely on the Imaginary (~S2) to orient us to the Symbolic (S1). It is in the Imaginary that we maintain an interplay of ourselves with others, ultimately enabling us to live together (though Lacan claims this is always through a kind of cross-talking). Keep in mind that the negated lower pair of ~S1 and ~S2 remain imaginary reflections of the actual complex pair, (S1) and (S2). What keeps us hinged in the necessary Symbolic edifice (S1) is a self-image which represents for us the kernel of our own subjectivity (~S1). This self-image however, is not the same as who or what we are. To this end, Lacan rewrites Descartes’ “Cogito Ergo Sum” as “I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think“. Nonetheless, it is in our personal investment in (~S1) that makes us dependent on what others think of us. This external dependence is how (~S1) is structurally contingent, although the actual content is personal and open to discourse. So within this square, it is the universal function’s failure to completely foreclose the Real and prevent distortions of others (or ourself) that highlights the three different reactions Wallerstien segments as a population’s willingness to adapt to or reject change.

So to return to that surprising reaction, I would have assumed that one who rejects some social norms would understand that with this rejection, their position may occupy an untenable difference within another’s Symbolic (S1). That is to say, a conservative who would be unwilling to accept in themself a difference of sexuality without losing that possibility of self (~S1) would definitely reject that difference of sexuality in another or at least locate the unacceptable difference wholly in another (~S2). Our poor friend however, is hurt by the verbal assailant’s remarks as her subjectivity (~S1) is questioned and she responds by reinstating her own position in the necessary order of things (S1) as a public declaration. The way to read the Gremasian Square is to understand that subjectivity is contingent on both the Imaginary others (~S2) who reject or accept the subject as well as the appeal to the Symbolic (S1) against the Real (S2). Without the Imaginary (~S2) acceptance of the subject (~S1), there is no subject. Such a position is the horror that Zizek calls the space between two deaths, when one is biologically alive but ostrasized from the community, publically dead.

The rejection of that desire as considered by the other to be one’s own introduces an element of the Real (S2) into the fragile Symbolic (S1). No wonder then, that slogans from those who oppose gay marriage include banners that equate one man to marrying another to one man to marrying a dog. The equation doesn’t mean to equate men with dogs but rather, to equate the feeling of beastality with homosexual marriage. This absurd equation betrays their bend as conservative — a genuine fear that should the Symbolic (S1) be extended, that fragile absolute (another title of one of Zizek’s books) may give way. A recent expression of this comes from David Tyree’s equating New York City’s acceptance of gay marriage with anarchy. One wonders then, at how fragile some conservative’s hold on the Symbolic order may be and if we could ever relate to one another without this Symbolic (as it is a point of reference). For the function of the Symbolic, is it possible to include the Real as a space within the function while maintaining tolerance and social order? In other words, how possible is it to locate within the Real a minimal relation to be Symbolic — to provide space in the Imaginary for tolerance and acceptance?

The function of the Symbolic order appears more robust than we might think, as it goes a long way in orienting ourselves to external events. South Park, the popular adult series created Matt Stone and Trey Parker, explores various positions people take in relation to Real, unaccountable events. These events, as a rule, come from media presentations and perverse positions, other (~S2) possibilities which must oriented to the Symbolic function (S1). It is through this accounting that we get a dialectical backlash in South Park between possible configurations of acceptability as the characters attempt to orient themselves within a Symbolic order (usually unsuccessfully) to justify or explain the acceptability of actions. Contrary to most conservative commentary on South Park, the ending configurations of the characters are usually presented to be ridiculous or at least out of proportion to the issue at hand. Earlier episodes in the show’s run were more to the point as to what is a ‘rational’ position ought to be. Some of the later satires reject an overt explanation and choose instead to settle on positions that maximize humor. Even so, for humor to function, it must retain a monocum of the Symbolic as reference. As Julia Kristeva wrote in Powers of Horror, what is humorous is usually only so as the exposure of different signifiers in a novel arrangement create jouissance. In other words, what is humorous is usually only acceptable as humor because it’s not an acceptable arrangement except as humor. The pleasure of humor is the pleasure of play within the Symbolic (so long as it does not shatter that regime).

South Park, as a satire, functions by simplifying most of their character’s interest in maintaining their own contingency, preferring to underscore instead, our tumultuous relationships within the Imaginary. (What makes South Park an examination of actual possibilities and not an examination of the Symbolic is the protagonists often not-listened-to appeals to a standard rationality. The under-grid of Symbolic rationality remains ignored, not questioned.) To give a real world example of this instability with the Symbolic we can turn to the avant gaarde’s push for new directions. Such movements are often offensive to some, as such movements often rebuke representationalism. Representationalism best deploys the Symbolic as over-coding the Real in a 1:1 relationship as though conservatives are less able to handle schisms in the Symbolic. The more extreme the over-coding, the stronger violations of the Symbolic invokes a bodily reaction to events that reveal the Real’s incoherency. The adherence to such an over-coding is what establishes our societal ‘grand gesture’ which in the 20th century was known as Modernism.

Modernism philosophically started long before the 20th century, but as a social movement, Modernism came together in the late 19th century as a style of presentation and coherence that in some ways matched the singularity of world orders like the United Nations. Modernism as a whole, however, is best digested as a rejection of traditional aesthetics, an establishing of new parameters of how we are to experience and relate. Modernism marks the single largest and far-reaching break in tradition. For the life-world, Modernism became coherent as new human existence for a current Now. This emphasis on ahistorical values arises as an absolute order without an outside, the best example being Formalism. In other words, if you are not within this absolute order, you are nowhere to be found.

In the larger picture, while Modernism can be connected with capitalism’s ever expanding market, market capitalism is but one expression of the ‘make it new’ of Modernism. Other expressions of Modernism include Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism. So while many philosophers such as Lyotard claim that Modernism is dead in favor of Postmodernism, Modernism continues as a grand narrative, under the guise of Postmodernism. Under Postmodernism, deployment of new expressions continues as an ahistorical re-framing of historical contexts. As such, Postmodernism functions as a hyper-modernism, co-opting the small other to illicit a homogeneous world order. Despite the many disavowals of the I and the kowtowing to small others when recognized as legitimate, any and all contacts with global capitalism usually means the destruction of alternate Symbolic configurations in favor of our global capitalism. Any sensitivity of context is a sensitivity necessary in a Postmodern deployment.

I bring this up not because it has anything to do with the dignity that our homosexual couple insisted on, but rather because our current Symbolic order displays an absolutism — that relationships and transactions be concluded through a narrow regime of Symbolic association. For instance, one of the main modes of our Symbolic relies on the filters of money and legal documentation, two contractual basises which form the bridge of our current Symbolic Regime. Fights over gay rights, or the slutwalk occur within capitalism because the market has not established a preference either way (unlike say, stealing). As time persists and capitalism benefits from the religious right and the spending power of the homosexual left so both will continue to contest one another in the public space at the expense of other policy decisions. Most likely though, capitalism is not incompatible with homosexuality and ultimately marriage will be expanded to include homosexual arrangements as this does not hurt global capitalism.

This brings us back to the original question — in terms of our current grand narrative of global capitalism — is the Symbolic completely mutually exclusive to the Real? Is there a psychial configuration that would allow us to better tolerate instances of the Real? Why rely on the contingency of others as deal with ourselves and each other in the imaginary spaces of (~S2) and (~S1)? In seeking to find a philosophical method to explain going beyond the Symbolic edifice, we run analogous to Buddhist thought on enlightenment. Enlightenment serves as a psychial position that exceeds the worldly concerns that structure subjectivity. Now as the order of the Symbolic operates more as a referent than a set content, so a re-centering the four positions can be best understood by retooling the Gremiasian Square through an analogous the structure in Buddhistm known as the Tetralemma.

The Tetralemma is a four fold step introduced as a logical exercise in Buddhist doctrine to expound the doctrines of two truths. Put simply, the two truths at hand are conventional truth — the common place wisdom of existence having substance, and the sacred truth — the emptiness or non-existence of substance. The four lemmas of the Tetralemma involves the precepts:

x
~x
both x & ~x
neither x & ~x

In dealing with the concepts of existence (x) and emptiness (~x), through the exercise of the Tetralemma, we step beyond having just classifications of the conventional existence of substance and the philosophical existence of nothing. In other words, the goal of the Tetralemma is to gain an understanding beyond the distinctions of ontology, of which emptiness is a exposition of the formal constraints of ontology. This is different from the Gremasian square in the sense that the Tetralemma works as a delimiter rather than as a position. The goal is to avoid all four positions, whereas in the Gremasian square it is the orientation of the positions that provide meaning. Nonetheless, used in conjunction with the Gremasian square above, we can utilize two Tetralemmas of emptiness and substance with the two indexes from the Gremasian square as the actual (S1) and (S2) with substance and the reflective (~S1) and (~S2) with emptiness. In the first Tetralemma:

There is a Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S1)
There is no Symbolic function by which we gain meaning (S2)
Both (S1) and (S2) apply
Neither (S1) and (S2) apply

In other words, we are dealing with the grounding of both existents and nothingness. Arguably, the social schism introduced by Modernism killed philosophy’s search for an ontological life leaving us with nihilism. Nihilism, like early postmodernism, insists that the formal constraints of ontology are not applicable anywhere, leaving us with nothing (to fit the bill with). Rather than a full blown rejection of the system itself, nihilism involves an adaptation of the system of meaning and its consequential failure to cohere meaning. Nihilism does not mean that there are no systems, only that the metrics we use to find valid systems yields no content. In this way, the third step and fourth step both appear to be alternative universalisations that happen when the symbolic function fails to yield an appropriate conclusion. Nihilism occupies both positions such that we have the system but no ontology or we reject the system and still do not have the authenticity of ontology.

This position reflects the same underpinnings as dialectical nihilism by at first insisting on a universal position although it goes beyond dialectical nihilism by in fact not sublimating the structure of the Tetralemmas at the level of the Notion. It is through the Tetralemma’s four precepts that we gain a richer understanding that unlike conservatives and our gay couple above, it’s not simply enough to be within the function and to desire collapse the Gremasian square to gain a tolerance of the Other so as to live with them (to insist that what I imagine to be the other’s position is in fact where I am as well, that (~S1) and (S1) and (~S2) and (S2) are in fact all super-imposed, without difference… the way to read this desire is that the conservative judges the homosexual to have a desire the homosexual then denies having). The Tetralemma instead goes beyond this to reject both the system and its content reserving neither Notion nor internal distance to uphold this desire or its judgement.

A rejection of the distinction of both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) constitute, in traditional terms, a confusion between how we are to understand our role in the world and how to basically orient ourself in the world. How can we make sense of what we could do vs how things happen to us and what we should make of them? Both the Symbolic (S1) and the Real (S2) rely on specific instances in order to provide actual interactions. It is in the application of the function in the imaginary spaces of (~S1) and (~S2) by which we run across the negative Tetralemma. Without addressing the application of the orientations inherent in (S1) and (S2), we run into the profound difficulty of skirting the regime of madness:

There is no self that is I (~S1).
There are no other subjectivities (~S2).
Both self (~S1) and others (~S2) do not exist.
There is neither no subjectivity (~S1) nor are there no other subjectivities (~S2).

The main difficulty in this Tetralemma lies in the lack of orientation a rejection of the application of possibility and contingency implies. Within this regime of non-applicability, we run into pitfalls similiar to those who do not socialize properly. I speak of some criminally insane who do not genuinely understand others, nor read on others the desire and pain, both reflective and independent of their own subjectivity.

What marks the difficulty in deploying an orientation of these concepts isn’t in their conceptual nature. We should not assume that the proper position within the Tetralemma involves a rejection of their concepts as such, but rather a rejection of the desire that navigates these polemics and binds us in these orientations. Movement within the Tetralemma isn’t accurately a dialectic, although I have used the term. Dialectical movements within the Hegelian traditional involve a progression of positions within an order to explain their meaning. The Tetralemma instead involves the limits of expatiation. When we abut a lemma we encounter a failure to grasp the Tetralemma as a whole. This is how the Tetralemma also is not a Gemasian Square — it does not rely on static positions from which we can garnish meaning from the other three positions.

So for applicability, let us return to our original example, it is not that the knee jerk response of our friend is in fact inappropriate. She is correct to understand that her subjectivity is contingent on the external circumstances of others who accept her, legitimatizing her place in the Symbolic. But the most the Symbolic can guarantee her or anyone else is a position of contingency and tolerance. Acceptance within the Symbolic does not assure her of the dignity of her subjectivity, it only imprisons her within the confines of the possibility of authenticity when continually confronted with others. This is the nature of contingency (~S1).

The ‘way out’ as espoused through the dialectical and radically transformative nature of the Tetralemma isn’t in the sublimation of the Tetralemma the way Hegel might want us to distance ourselves from the Notion in order to better find ourselves within it. The key of the Tetralemmas is best expressed through the Real, as the Real remains the threat for all other positions. What makes the position of the Real ‘Impossible’ (S2) is not only the ineffectual application of Symbolic order on a shifting and vague desire — but, from the point of view of the Real, the union between any of the other three relationships are impossible because of the shifting and vague nature of desire undergridding each. When we seek to legitamize ourselves, that legitamcy is in fact never permanent, being contingent. When we seek to understand the other on their terms, it is impossible because we must resort to imagination — we can never know their radical difference, only read on their difference a reflection of our own difference.

This insubstantiability of position that all eight lemmas deploy disallows one to fully invest in any position, opening the door to the Real as it were without casting one fully into it. We acknowledge our own insubstantiality inasmuch as anyone else’s. For instance, in neither accepting being submitted to the function or outside of the function, one rejects both the absolute madness of emptiness and the contingency one might always bear. One can be oneself, as it were, all the while allowing others to be themselves without that reflexivity or demand that one be ‘with it’ or not ‘with it’.

On me watching Porky’s

June 19, 2011 / alex posted in Business, images of being-human, universal nothing / No Comments

I wonder what its like to live a life where you want the world to end. Where you want to put a stop to all sadness or happiness. Every few years you hear rumors that everything will stop — that we are out of control and beyond all reason.

And what must that be like, to be so disappointed?

I’m sure the little things are alright. I am sure that you can still pet your dog, or glance out your side window while driving and see a beautiful bird in mid-flap, soaring by you. I am sure your lunch still tastes good. And that it’s nice to take your shoes off and lay in bed. Plus you can still look forward to orgasms… But to lose your belief, to lose some fundamental faith? What must that be like? And then, why even get up in the morning? Why even stay sober?

It must be disappointing when, like the day after your 10th birthday, you get up and life goes on. Mornings are still foggy. People still stop at starbucks on their way to work, and they don’t seem to care that the sky has fallen, and shown its skeleton — and that there’s nothing there. Only you see it. Nothing left at all. Nothing.

I don’t think that I have a problem with this. But I think some people do. In thirty years, where will I be? I’ve seen now that the super-geniuses can grasp and implement like nothing else. And while it’s magical when that happens, ITS FUCKING REAL. I suppose my fault was that I thought I would always make typos and have to test functions that I just wrote. But the fact of the matter is, everything is well within grasp and it seems the only thing stopping anyone is my own lack of focus. I must have wasted 3 hours just walking in circles imaginging lines of code that I was too tired to write. But it’s all right there, within grasp. The time taken to write anything is well less than the time taken to decide what it is you want to write.

one thing I don’t get is why anyone gets out of bed. about 7 or 8 years ago… I suppose I found my answer. I want to keep things going, keep things interesting… I want to do the things I do because that’s the best way to keep challenged. It’s a play-dough world. But what if you didn’t think it mattered, that nothing was worth doing or that your job was horrible and that was the best you could do?

I can’t imagine what that must be. I can’t imagine what it must be to be the downtrodden of the earth, to be the remnants of something else. To always be 5 minutes off. I mean, there isn’t any perfection. It’s all shit. We’re all lego pieces, stuff that we have lying around that we use as best we can. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about anything. We just have the morals we have because that’s part of the challenge. That’s part of the picture. And even if there isn’t a picture it’s just part of who you are.

Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I think I lost something within the last few months, or maybe a year or two ago, and I just didn’t notice. In a way though, once you touch upon it, there’s really nothing there. You’re standing on your own two feet. And while the mirror of other people’s faces is your own mirror — when they dance or wonder — you respond… so the puppetshow is alive and well, but that’s not what I had thought would be there. It’s like how in the process of learning chess the board will get so big, and other times get so small. It’s a matter of what’s in the box. And yet in the end, you need desire. I can’t account for that. Can you? Men and women greedy in different ways — and need to be greedy in different ways. You need to have unfathomable connections to things like volcanos, unicorns and the bottom of the ocean. And I guess that’s the only way to walk under a continually shattering sky.

Losing faith isn’t like anything actually changes, it’s more like finding yourself in the wrong parallel universe. We’re just sort of trapped in between slides of ourselves. And then when like at the end of a sonata we have the recapitulation, we return home and find out that it’s incomplete, and not right.

You know I hate Lord of the Rings. But that’s Frodo coming home. He’s left and returned to the physical location but unlike Dorothy he can’t go home.

Because there isn’t a home for him anymore.

At times like this, I suppose we need to be the brave travelers of the world. We have to be the sundry spirits of Xanadu or some kind of nonsense like that. the alchemist, whatever. Alchemy is a matter of spirit, a matter of individual transcendence… but that’s the same kind of psychotic misalignment those mediveal alchemists had — they mistook spirit for something physical. Iimagine Rene Descartes or some such philosopher digging through corpses looking for the seat of the soul. And yet all they find is more fibroblasts. Blood, collagen. What does this seat even look like? Madmen have searched through hundreds of dead bodies, eagerly cutting into the dead criminals looking for something they know not what.

That’s the wonder of Star Trek you know. They are messages in a bottle zipping around a deadly serious and completely apersonal universe being hysterical about themselves. I’m sure Herman Hesse’s Stepphenwolf is laughing Mozart right now. That sounds about right. So many directions I can go in! All of them amount to sand though. It’s your own trip. And beneath that, is more of your own trip. That you have a trip, or that you don’t have one. It’s so meta it’s the next Hipster Kitty.

But at the same time it’s like, you can do something about it. so why not “go green” or whatever. Save the Earth! Or fuck the Earth, the Earth can take care of itself lets just drive our cars around and be stupid, cuz that’s the most fun. I really look around and see nothing but that, and I despise it. All those commercials on tv, where everyone just parties and parties. Cuz I guess only so many of us sit in an office, so only so many of us get that — but everyone, and anyone can and should party.

Pointless.

but I guess I prefer to sit in my room and listen to music and stare at my navel. That’s what I did today. And oh, sometimes I crammed small bits of electronic material ushered carefully down fragile tubes to generate more fragile “documents” so as to appease people who were convinced by me (mostly) to pay us hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, to have.

It sounds kind of goofy but that’s only until you realize that it’s not like the money matters either.

This is what ppl do when they have too much time on their hands.

This is what i do.

See what happens when I watch 80s high school comedies about getting laid? I guess this is the same thing. Me laughing at some guy’s penis stuck in the wrong place.

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